Hat Trick

Our cash register wasn’t a complicated thing. There was no fancy computer system, just a calculator and a drawer for the money. A customer would find a hat they wanted, I would check the price tag, written in pen on a small piece of paper hanging from a string, and then I would take their money and put it in the register. I’ve turned the key to slide that heavy metal drawer open so many times that I’ve caught myself mirroring the motion with my arm as I struggle to fall asleep. A simple twist of the wrist, a slight tug of the tendons in the forearm, and the wheels in the drawer would do the rest.

From time to time, the owner would come to greet a regular customer or to restock the shelves. She was a woman of about seventy, always garbed in a long dress that would hang from her neck like a body bag. Her feet couldn’t be seen from beneath the dress, giving her movements a type of phantasmagorical drift. She never made eye contact with me, not when she came out to the shop floor, not even when she gave me my biweekly paycheck. Her name was Ms. Matsumoto. If she had a first name, it was reserved only for those regular customers who came in on Thursdays and bought the expensive lavender hats that balanced precariously like crooked halos above their heads.

I had a recurring dream where Matsumoto died of a heart attack. I wore my finest black dress and shoes to the funeral, with a tacky hat purchased at Nordstrom. At the reading of the will, she left to me all of her money, and her shop with it. The lawyer would take me into a room in the back to collect my inheritance. The room was shrouded in darkness save for a pale, impersonal light shining on Matsumoto’s black coffin. The lid would slide off and fall to the floor with a crash. From the waist, the woman would rise stiffly and hand me the envelope, my final paycheck, and return to her eternal rest without looking me once in the eye. I would wake, filled with indignation, to find my arm outstretched upward, grasping something that was not there, the rabbit tattooed on my wrist frozen mid-run, as though it was shot while trying to escape the confines of my skin.

My uncle had trained me in magic from a young age. To take air and smoke and resolve them to the spectator’s eyes into fine matter, he would describe it. I called it elegance in deceit. I practiced sleight of hand with a precision as though my fingers were tightrope walkers with no net below. Taking money from the dull machine was just another magic trick. With no records, it would disappear as though it were never there. As I handed a customer their change, I would snag a few extra bills, concealing them like another rabbit up my sleeve. The touch of the crisp bills to my skin gave me a satisfaction bordering on erotic. It made my income feel personal again. The paychecks belonged to my name, but this money belonged to me. I steal not out of necessity; I could easily live comfortably off my wages. But to live only off the money I plucked like dried fruit from her withered arm would hardly be a fulfilling source of income. The money I plucked from its iron crypt customer by customer was mine in a far more meaningful way than simply a legal belonging.

On Thursdays when those important women came in to buy the expensive lavender hats that balanced precariously like crooked halos above their heads, I would ring the bell for Ms. Matsumoto, and I would ring up their purchase, and I would smile sweetly and say “Thank you for your patronage,” and I would twist my wrist and tug lightly, and I would hand them their money, and I would feel the extra bills pressed like tattoos against my arm beneath my sleeve, and I would close the drawer again and I would nod my head and from the bottom of my heart, I would tell them, “I hope you have a wonderful day.”